CRITICAL THINKING

COMPLEX THINKING SESSION 4

CRITICAL THINKING SESSION 4

SESSION 4 COMPLEX THINKING

Complex Thinking: Creativity, Critical Thought, and Logic

A separate set of mental processes facilitates your ability to

do complex, sophisticated thinking, such as understanding

concepts, generating original ideas, and using logical

approaches to address complicated problems. Complex

thinking includes many key abilities that are important to

success in today’s world.

People with strengths in complex thinking may be good at

deeply understanding ideas and concepts, seeing

connections among information from different sources,

demonstrating imagination, constructing and defending

arguments based on facts or evidence, taking risks with new

ideas, and/or drawing inferences from limited information.

Conversely, people with challenges in this area may

struggle to understand new ideas and concepts without

considerable support, have trouble “reading between the

lines” or making inferences, approach problems in a

haphazard way, or tend to rely on existing ideas rather than

coming up with original ones.

As with other areas of learning, complex thinking is not

something you’re simply either good at or not good at.

Different people are good at thinking about different kinds

of ideas. The subject matter—and your level of interest in it—

can affect how well you understand and think about

concepts. And everyone has a certain degree of

imagination and creativity.

Strategies for managing challenges with complex thinking

◾Talk through an approach to solving a difficult problem

with someone else before beginning.

◾Make an effort to ask good questions when learning about

a new idea. This can help increase your comprehension.

◾Take an improvisation class. This can help you practice

“thinking on your feet” and coming up with unscripted ideas

in response to a line or scenario you’re given.

◾Play games that develop reasoning and logic skills.

Research suggests even simple, inexpensive games can

have a big impact.

◾Turn off the television. To find out how this and other

strategies can encourage creativity and innovation

Complex Thinking Skills & Reasoning

Introduction

This page is designed for busy practitioners trying to design

performance assessment tasks that align standards and

benchmarks with assessments that really measure what's

valued and that incorporate higher order thinking skills.

Thinking skills and reasoning processes are considered a

critical element to designing purposeful performance

assessment tasks, as well as thought-provoking pencil-paper

test items by experts such as Jay McTighe, Grant Wiggins,

Richard Stiggins, Art Costa and Robert Marzano, to mention

but a few.

For decades, teachers have been learning about the levels

of thinking skills/processes (i.e. Bloom's Taxonomy) and

attempting to provide work for their students in such a way

that it provides the practice, rehearsal and scrimmage

necessary for students to become competent thinkers.

What you find provided, are templates reflecting a

combination of the work of many great educational

leaders, local as well as national. Some, dating back as far

as Benjamin Bloom's work of three to four decades ago,

some as recent as Robert Marzano's work in Dimensions of

Learning and in Content Knowledge: A Compendium of

Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education.

Incorporating Thinking Skills into Performance Assessment

Tasks

Attention to selecting which thinking skill or reasoning

process that should be incorporated in a performance

assessment task is the 2nd step in the nine step plan. The 1st

step focuses attention on selecting the standard and

benchmark that the task will assess. Step #2 asks the

designer to choose a thinking skill or a reasoning process to

provide structure for the task. The choice of a thinking skill or

a reasoning process should answer the task design question:

"What will students do to be able to show they understand

the content chosen for them to learn?"

Once a task designer has selected the thinking skill or

reasoning process to be incorporated in the performance

assessment task from the At-A-Glance list, more detailed

guidelines can be found by clicking on the name of the skill

or process. Provided at those links will be detailed

instructions for teaching a thinking skill; guiding questions,

process steps and graphic organizers to be used to focus

the learners; as well as checklists and rubrics to provide

formative and summative feedback to students and their

parents. Sample tracking matrixes and teacher observation

forms are also featured to help educators document the

balance and the frequency of the skills and processes being

taught, supported and assessed.

At-A-Glance: Thinking Skills and Reasoning Processes

The following thinking skills and reasoning processes are

linked to a web page that contains the downloadable

resources on:

strategies for teaching a thinking skill/reasoning process

assessment checklist (K-2)

assessment student rubric

assessment teacher rubric

Extend & Refining Knowledge - Dimension 3

Thinking Skill Stimulus Questions

Comparing

How might ___________ and ___________ be

organized into groups? What are the rules or

characteristics that have been used to form

groups?

Classifying

How might ___________ be organized into

groups? What are the rules or characteristics

that have been used to form groups?

Extend & Refining Knowledge - Dimension 3

Thinking Skill Stimulus Questions

Induction

What conclusions could be drawn from the

data?

Deduction

Are there specific rules operating? Are there

things that must happen because of these

rules?

Error Analysis

Are there errors in reasoning or in a process

that can be described?

Constructing

Support

Is there a position you want to defend on a

particular issue?

Abstracting

What is the relationship that exists in

___________ ? What is the abstract pattern or

theme that lies at the heart of the

relationship?

Analyzing

Perspectives

What are the different perspectives or points

of view on an issue?

Using Knowledge Meaningfully - Dimension 4

Reasoning Process Stimulus Questions

Decision Making

Is there an important decision that should

be studied or made?

Problem Solving

Is there some obstacle that needs to be

overcome?

Experimental

Inquiry

Is there a prediction about ___________

that can be made and then tested?

Invention

Is there something you want to create or

improve upon?

Investigation

Historical

Projective

Is there something that happened in

the past that could be studied?

Is there a possible or hypothetical

event that could be examined?

Using Knowledge Meaningfully - Dimension 4

Reasoning Process Stimulus Questions

Definitional Is there a new concept or theory

that could be described in detail?

Complex Thinking

Description

Thinking skills are often characterized on a continuum of

levels. Lower levels of thinking are simpler (memorizing,

identifying, etc.). than higher levels (synthesizing, judging,

analyzing, etc.) Differentiating curriculum to increase the

complexity of the thinking involved means the learning

process will emphasize the use and development of higher

level thinking skills. This includes creative and critical thinking,

problem solving, concept development, conflict resolution,

moral and ethical reasoning and analysis. Complex thinking

processes often involve content that is abstract or complex.

Students should apply the new thinking to new situations,

use their new skills to develop new knowledge, products, or

ideas, and then evaluate the qualities of their thinking.

All students need to develop a repertoire of higher level

thinking skills; however highly able learners who naturally

think in more complex ways can and should spend a

relatively greater proportion of their school time using and

developing these skills. The overlapping triangles in Figure

4.6.1 represent this difference in emphasis. Remembering,

understanding and applying are the lower levels; analyzing,

evaluating and creating are considered higher levels of

thinking .The height of each triangle indicates the relative

amount of time students should spend developing skills at

each level of thinking; higher means more time and lower

means less. The bases of both triangles cover all levels

indicating all students need to learn and use all thinking

skills. The height of the triangle for complex thinkers is greater

over the higher levels of thinking to show that highly able

learners who naturally think in more complex ways and are

ready to develop even more sophisticated cognitive

processes than others should spend more of their time doing

this.

Figure 4.6.1

Examples

Programs for thinking skill development: Bloom’s Taxonomy

(revised by Anderson & Kratwohl in 2001) is one of many

systems proposed to support the development of complex

thinking skills. It is given more attention in Appendix B.

Others include:

Parnes’ version of Creative Problem Solving (further

developed by Treffinger

Paul & Elder’s Critical Thinking

Each of these approaches focuses on a different type of

thinking, however there are overlaps among them as well. A

teacher should choose the model that emphasizes the type

of thinking best suited to the learning outcomes to be

addressed. Committing to one model and using it

consistently, within and across content areas, will have

greater benefits for students than attempting to introduce

more than one at the same time. Students should however,

be introduced to a variety of models and heuristics during

their years in school.

Graphic organizers are also an effective means of enabling

students to understand and improve their thinking. More

complex graphics can be offered to more complex thinkers.

They take the form of webs, flow charts, matrices,

hierarchies, Venn diagrams, cycles, etc. Many templates for

using shapes to guide the development of different types of

analyzing information and planning complex activities are

available online.

A number of the “College of William and Mary Teaching

Models” are graphic organizers to be used in the

development of critical thinking skills. For example, the

Hamburger Model for Persuasive Writing:

“The Hamburger Model uses the familiar metaphor of a

sandwich to help students construct a paragraph or essay.

Students begin by stating their point of view on the issue in

question (the top bun). They then provide reasons, or

evidence, to support their claim; they should try to

incorporate at least three supportive reasons (the “patties”).

Elaboration on the reasons provides additional detail (the

“fixings”). A concluding sentence or paragraph wraps up

the sandwich (the bottom bun).”

Teaching Complex Thinking

Challenge students toward cognitive complexity.

Students at risk of educational failure, particularly those of

limited standard English proficiency, are often forgiven any

academic challenges on the assumption that they are of

limited ability, or they are forgiven any genuine assessment

of progress because the assessment tools are inadequate.

Thus, both standards and feedback are weakened, with the

predictable result that achievement is impeded. While such

policies may often be the result of benign motives, the

effect is to deny many diverse students the basic

requirements of progress -- high academic standards and

meaningful assessment that allows feedback and

responsive assistance.

There is a clear consensus among education researchers

that students at risk of educational failure require instruction

that is cognitively challenging; that is, instruction that

requires thinking and analysis, not only rote, repetitive,

detail-level drills. This does not mean ignoring phonics rules,

or not memorizing the multiplication tables, but it does

mean going beyond that level of curriculum into the

exploration of the deepest possible reaches of interesting

and meaningful materials. There are many ways in which

cognitive complexity has been introduced into the

teaching of students at risk of educational failure. There is

good reason to believe, for instance, that a bilingual

curriculum itself provides cognitive challenges that make it

superior to a monolingual approach.

Working with a cognitively challenging curriculum requires

careful leveling of tasks, so that students are motivated to

stretch. It does not mean drill-and-kill exercises, nor it does

not mean overwhelming challenges that discourage effort.

Getting the correct balance and providing appropriate

assistance is, for the teacher, a truly cognitively challenging

task.

Indicators of Challenging Activities

The teacher:

1. assures that students - for each instructional topic -

see the whole picture as a basis for understanding

the parts.

2. presents challenging standards for student

performance.

3. designs instructional tasks that advance student

understanding to more complex levels.

4. assists students to accomplish more complex

understanding by building from their previous

success.

5. gives clear, direct feedback about how student

performance compares with the challenging

standards.